Rushing to judgment - The Coal Disaster and the Media an unsavory mix.

The victims of the coal disaster this week in the Sago Mine in West Virgina were first injured by the blast itself, then by the long wait for rescue, last and perhaps most egregiously well into the future, by the media.

The race by the media has become more harried and more reckless in the last several years. Many will recall the incorrect reporting that Dewey beat Truman, in 1972, the erroneous printing that all Israeli athletes had survived the hostage taking in Munich, and then again erroneously reporting Bush had won the Whitehouse in 2000 before the fruitless Gore challenge. We live in a 24 hour cycle for news and each network is trying to best the other quickly nipped at the heels by the news services and papers.

Al Tompkins, a former colleague of mine and now a faculty member at the Poynter Institute a journalism think-tank in Florida (of which I am also an alumni), said in an AP report that "we took what appeared to be good information... And added a level of certainty that it did not warrant." He continued, saying that some of the papers covered themselves appropriately by saying and using the term "reportedly" when relaying the information that the folks in the mine had been rescued.

When I read that in an AP article, I almost dropped my coffee this morning. "Reportedly" is a cheap J school "out" for someone who did not do his or her homework and did not get attribution. I learned in school, as did Al, the old journalist's adage "if your mother says she loves you check it out." They did not have corroborating sources. They (AP) made it up.

AP says they relied on "credible sources" who apparently included family members and the Governor who had spoken to the families. There was jubilation, but during the celebration and the rush to beat he other guy, no one apparently wondered "why wasn't the coal company in front of the cameras and reporters basking in the glow of the rescue?" They relied on hearsay and not fact.

Not everyone took the bait however. To my surprises, Nightline stayed above board. Correspondent John Donovan had apparenlty been skeptical of the early news that the miners had been found alive. James Goldston, executive producer of ABC's "Nightline," which reported the apparent rescue for East Coast viewers and broke in live to announce the deaths to West Coast viewers at 2:59 a.m. Eastern time, said, "We refused to run it until we had specific confirmation that was double, triple, quadruple sourced," Goldston said.

Have no doubt, this debacle lays solely on the shoulders of the AP. They were lazy, took hearsay and made it fact. Facts that may have sold hundreds of thousands of papers across the country in the morning, but caused thousands of tears in the small community in West Virginia where, tragically, a dozen cola miners lost their lives. What has me baffled is that the coal company is now backing off saying there was a "breakdown in communication." There was no breakdown in communication. The media broke their number one rule and fell back on the journalist's adage of the 1990's and now " don"t let the truth get in the way of a good story (or in the NY Times style book, in the way of an agenda item."

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that though she sympathized with reporters who were dealing with a fast-breaking story and deadlines, the erroneous accounts were a "failure of skepticism" on the part of reporters.

"The reporter has an obligation to say to the governor, 'How do you know?' and to the family members, 'Who told you?' " Preach on Sister!